Electronics manufacturing has been moving overseas at a rapid pace. It is increasingly difficult to produce popular commercial devices, such as cell phones, in the U.S. because engineers are designing them with hundreds of parts that can be made and assembled for pennies overseas. Not only is the cost of labor a driving factor in outsourcing manufacturing, but also lax environmental regulations abroad, which offer a competitive advantage that the U.S. cannot match. For example, printed circuit boards (PCBs) still take days or weeks to prototype and are typically made by third parties using highly expensive specialized etching/milling equipment. PCB manufacturing requires numerous chemical processes and materials, many of which contain chemicals that are difficult to dispose of and harmful to the environment.
Additive fabrication techniques, such as 3D printing, offer the potential to disrupt current manufacturing methods and bring the U.S. back to the forefront of cutting edge, environmentally benign manufacturing. Specialized machines that rely on costly tooling, dies, and so forth may no longer be needed to make individual products. The need for millions of unskilled workers to assemble devices could be eliminated, as well as a compelling value proposition to manufacture devices halfway around the globe. As the world faces shortening supplies of materials and an increase in pollution from transportation, zero-waste manufacturing may become a necessity. The Department of Energy estimates that nearly a 50% reduction in energy would be obtained by using additive, instead of subtractive, manufacturing processes.